THIS OLD TOWN: School kids then and now

The most obvious difference between schoolchildren in the present iPhone age and in the Neanderthal era when I attended classes is that I almost never see today’s kids walking to school.

As early as 6:45 a.m., while I’m doing my daily exercises, I see from my bedroom window the school buses rolling past, accumulating long lines of vehicles behind them as they stop every 200 yards to pick up pupils.

Harry Chase

The most obvious difference between schoolchildren in the present iPhone age and in the Neanderthal era when I attended classes is that I almost never see today’s kids walking to school.

As early as 6:45 a.m., while I’m doing my daily exercises, I see from my bedroom window the school buses rolling past, accumulating long lines of vehicles behind them as they stop every 200 yards to pick up pupils.

Some parents turn up their noses at buses and add to the traffic by chauffeuring their youngsters to school in the family car.

In my boyhood, when Mansfield had 10 schoolhouses and no buses, every child lived within 11/2-mile walking distance of an elementary school. Multiply that mileage by four, because we came home for dinner (as lunch was called).

Beginning at age 5, when I entered first grade, I hiked 20 miles weekly to and from Roland Green School on Dean Street. By second grade I ran it. I think this exercise has worked in my favor all the rest of my life.

It’s true that many if not most kids today don’t live within walking distance of their schools. And without question, buses are better than the old inefficient one-room one-teacher neighborhood schoolhouses.

Yet does anyone ever think that maybe – just maybe — the rate of childhood obesity, which in the U.S. has more than tripled in the last 30 years, might somehow be related to the fact that children no longer walk (or run) to school?

Another difference between school kids then and now is that these days even small fry await their buses loaded like Grand Canyon pack mules with knapsacks almost as big as themselves. I assume the packs carry homework. We had no homework until seventh grade and that usually consisted of one or two books easily toted in the hand.

It distresses me as a former army man, camper, hiker and mountain climber that no one has taught children the right way to carry their backpacks, which is high between the shoulder blades. Not only do these non-walking kids invite obesity, they can expect future lumbar problems because at every step their packs thump their tailbones.

Nowadays our schools offer many sports to keep at least some of the boys and girls in shape. There’s basketball, field hockey, ice hockey, track, volleyball, soccer, baseball, football (well, not for girls – yet), wrestling, lacrosse and swimming, plus gymnastics and phys ed. Each of these has a coach or instructor – 38 in all.

In my high school days, boys played only baseball, basketball and football. The one coach, to earn his salary, also taught arithmetic and English. The football squad numbered 26 players, compared with 32 kids in the school’s Latin Club. Lower schools offered no sports.

Being the tallest in my class, I was urged repeatedly to “go out for basketball.” Likewise, the coach wanted our biggest boy (he weighed about 175) on the football team. We weren’t into sports, and nixed the invitations. But we both remained in good enough shape to make it into our 90s.

Okay, I’m starting to sound like great uncle Hezekiah. Most families when I was a lad had a great uncle Hezzy who, if we griped about walking to classes, would croak, “Why, at your age I hiked 14 miles to school and never missed a day, even through the Blizzard of ’88.”

What Hezzy never mentioned was that he quit school at 12 to dig ditches, had the vocabulary of a stable hand and couldn’t divide 100 by 10.

So just once I‘ll soft pedal my odious comparisons and instead compliment this old town’s students, who rate above state average in educational achievement. Even great uncle Hezekiah would’ve admitted, “If I’d of had the education these Mansfield kids have I mighta amounted to somethin’.”

Lifelong Mansfield resident Harry B. Chase Jr. served on the town’s first conservation commission and is a founding and charter member of the Natural Resources Trust of Mansfield. He can be reached at mansfield@wickedlocal.com or at 508 967-3510.